Highlights from Mayflower Early Service 1-9-2011

Highlights from Mayflower Early Service 1-9-2011

Chris Moore, preaching

The Prayer of Confession:
Gracious God, as we enter a new year, we confess that for too long we have let the nature of our faith be dictated to us. And by rejecting religion the way that it has been presented to us, we end up leading an empty revolution that leaves us still wanting. We end up rejecting all tradition, all ritual and all experience in the name of rejecting the religion that we feel pulls us away from you instead of to you. Help us to find some balance. Help restore in us a sense of tradition and experience that calls us more deeply to you. Help us to find new ways to be baptized into your new life. Help us to be ready for a revolution that leads us to doors and arms being flung open, justice restored and life renewed. Amen.

Scripture Lesson Matthew 3:13-17 (Jesus' baptism by John)

Sermon Title: Ready for the Revolution

In the ancient world, few could swim. Bodies of water were places of death and chaos. When people were baptized by John, it probably was the first time that they had been under water, so it must have felt as though they were literally dying and being reborn.

When one becomes a minister, one takes on a new identity that may seem like a new life. Jesus' baptism signified his new life of ministry announcing the presence of the kingdom of God. It was the beginning of a new world based on repenting our old way of relating to one another and the way we lived and acted in God's creation. We are to live now as God has wanted us to live all along.

If we consider salvation merely an individual act of repentance that appeases a wrathful God saving us from his eternal damnation, then we have yet to undergo the baptism of Jesus. Only by repenting what we have done to exploit the earth and each other can we save ourselves and the world of which we are a part.

That is the revolution to which Jesus called us, which his life is the example.

A Prayer for Justice for All

God of all humankind. God of many names, honored in many ways.

Your prophet Amos told the people of his nation, "Hear this, O ye who swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail. . . . I will turn your feasts to mourning and your songs to lamentations."

As your prophets long ago called their nation to repent of theirs sins against your justice, may our nation in our time hear the call for us to repentance of our sins against those most in need of justice.

Lord, forgive us.

For we have failed to pay many workers a livable wage, so they and their families, including their children, must live in poverty in our land of wealth and plenty.

We have treated health care, not as the human right it is, but as a commodity for our profit, making money from basic human needs, causing medical care to become so expensive that 40% of all American companies now offer no health benefits at all for their employees.

We have denied the workers of this great land their right to free association by allowing those in power to harass and intimidate workers who wish to form unions, even to the point of denying them their constitutional right to organize at all leaving them weak and vulnerable to those in power.

We have denied our fellow Americans their right to dignity. For Lord, when we try to call human rights, "special rights," we merely seek to justify our fears, our prejudices, and our exploitations.

Lord, forgive us our sins, for we have truly done what we ought not to have done, but, what is worse, we have left undone those things that we ought to have done.

May we not grow weary in our labors to brings about your justice and mercy to our land. For in these times, your work must truly be our own.

Amen